This paper examines the process of adjustment of prices in Italy to determine whether nominal flexibility, measured by the frequency of price changes, has increased in the recent years of protracted stagnation and double-dip recession. The analysis is based on a large micro-level dataset of...

We compare direct forecasts of HICP and HICP excluding energy and food in the euro area and five member countries to aggregated forecasts of their main components from large Bayesian VARs with a shared set of predictors. We focus on conditional point and density forecasts, in line with...

We quantify the effects of wage bargaining shocks on macroeconomic aggregates using a structural vector auto-regression model for Germany. We identify exogenous variation in bargaining power from episodes of minimum wage introduction and industrial disputes. This narrative information...

The existence of nominal rigidities and inflation differentials between countries offers two of the main rationales for an inflation buffer in a monetary union where monetary policy is oriented towards an area-wide inflation objective. Evidence accumulated since 2003 suggests that nominal...

Despite notable improvements in the labour market since 2013, wage growth in the euro area was subdued and substantially overpredicted in 2013-17. This paper summarises the findings of an ESCB expert group on the reasons for low wage growth and provides comparable analyses on wage developments...

This paper presents new evidence on the patterns of price and wage adjustment in European firms and on the extent of nominal rigidities. It uses a unique dataset collected through a firm-level survey conducted in a broad range of countries and covering various sectors. Several conclusions are...

The paper focuses on the measurement of the NAIRU (Non-Accelerating-Inflation-Rate-of-Unemployment) for the euro area and assesses the usefulness of different methodologies developed in the literature to estimate this unobservable variable at the aggregate level. After reviewing the theoretical...

The paper attempts at disentangling the main sources of the rise in the Italian unemployment rate over the last four decades on the basis of a small model a la Layard-Nickell, identified and estimated using a structural VAR approach. Unemployment movements are assumed to be driven by fully...

We derive indicators of labour market flexibility that are comparable across countries and time intervals. Our indicators build on a structural VAR model of real wages, output and unemployment dynamics. We compute our indicators for thirteen OECD countries and for two time periods, and we...

This paper addresses the issue of measuring the NAIRU for the euro area and assessing the robustness and precision of the obtained estimates. The empirical framework adopted is based on systems combining an Okun-type relationship between cyclical unemployment and the output gap with a Phillips...